


In from the cold

by lemonbalmlemonverbena



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-15
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-02-02 21:17:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12734472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonbalmlemonverbena/pseuds/lemonbalmlemonverbena
Summary: Set sometime after 7x07, aimed at solving the problem of how Sansa and Sandor Clegane might be initially reunited at Winterfell and have the opportunity to exhibit some of their respective character growth, without the burden of court protocol, nosy bystanders and all their emotional baggage.The Hound and Arya swear a lot. Some suggested sex stuff in the far distance if you squint very hard.





	1. Sansa I

From within the confines of the scraggly pine woods that surrounded Winterfell, the snow flurries felt thinner than they had out on the plain. They were sheltered, just a bit, from the frigid winds that came with the Others.

She somehow hadn’t been surprised when, as she grasped the dragonglass dagger in her hand, ready to at least strike a glancing blow at the wight nearest to her, Sandor Clegane galloped up on a great chestnut stallion, swept her up with one arm and carried her away from the clawing horde of dead men who had felled her guards, one by one.

Of course it was him. Of course.

She’d been waiting so long. He was bound to finally come for her when death was no longer merely likely, merely probable, but certain.

She knew that the battle encircled them still, but somehow he’d ridden her away from the worst of the chittering wights and the silent, striding Walkers. She sat side-saddle in front of him, one of his arms and his thighs touching her back regularly as the horse moved. She tried to sit straight, leaning away from the warmth of him.

He reined in the horse and looked around them. They had a moment’s peace amidst it all. She spared a moment to wonder how he’d found her, how he’d found his way to Winterfell after all this time. She heard him exhale heavily–more of a pant than a sigh–and watched as the heat of his breath dispersed into whirls and spirals of steam in the cold air.

He nodded down to her, ever so slightly, and seemed to pause to choose his words deliberately before speaking them.

“Are you…wearing…mail?” he asked. She was tucked under his chin and couldn’t see his face without craning her neck, but she could well imagine the arch of his one good eyebrow as he asked. She fingered the edge of the mail where it fell at the top of her dove-gray wool skirt.

“Yes. My master-at-arms insisted,” replied Sansa. She thought she saw his jaw tighten just a little.

“Forgive me, my lady,” he said with self-evident strain, “But what the fuck are you doing out here?’

“I wouldn’t shame my family by having Northmen on the field of battle without a Stark in the vanguard,” she said with stiff-backed earnestness, finally daring to look up past his great winter beard into his eyes. She heard a choking sound from deep in his throat.

“Naturally. And where–might I ask–is your little sister?” He peered suspiciously into the woods around them as he asked, seeming to half-expect the wolf-girl to appear from behind a tree as he spoke, with the Needle in her hand and a snarl on her lips.

“She’s holding the castle,” replied Sansa.

Sandor Clegane exhaled roughly through his nose, his lips a tight line of restraint. She wasn’t sure if he was holding back amusement or disgust or both. “Of course she is. Well…your bastard brother is here now.” He gestured vaguely with the reins to the Targaryen legions that had ridden onto the field just as she had been certain that all was lost. “Does that suffice to protect the battlefield honor of bloody House Stark?”

“Yes, I suppose it does,” she said.

“Then, Stark, may I please take you home to Winterfell?” The please was a curse, gritted out between clenched teeth. She could feel that he’d suffered through the entire conversation as a nod to her dignity as the Lady of the North. He was the Hound, and he wanted nothing more than to carry her off, and yet, as ever, she felt that perhaps he was the only one who had ever asked her what she wanted, the only one who ever dared to think that perhaps she might, just might, be entitled to determine her own fate.

“You may. Thank you.” she said. She wouldn’t dare even a tiny smile, but it took surprising force to resist the curl of her lips. She had to look down past his knee, past the stirrups, to the horse’s hoofprints in the snow to bury the feeling was bubbling in her throat and threatening to reveal itself on her face.

Still, she was unable to resist leaning into him. Gods forgive her. She leaned her head into his vast shoulder as she wrapped her arm around his wide back to clutch the fabric of his leather tunic. She allowed herself to inhale from his neck the smell of sweat and road dust and wood smoke and horse, and she realized the metallic tang of blood and the vinegar sweetness of wine were missing from a half-remembered cloud of sense memory.

She could take this moment, at least, without anyone begrudging it. Couldn’t she?

He kicked the horse’s flanks, turning them back toward Winterfell. As they rode together toward the gate of her home, she had the strangest feeling that the ghost of a long-suffering dead man had finally been released from the prison that was this world and was floating free, away from earthly feelings like shame and fear and regret.


	2. Sandor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> {This story got ahold of me, so here's another installment.}
> 
> Sandor Clegane snatched Sansa Stark away from certain death on the plain beyond Winterfell, but that's hardly the end of his troubles.
> 
> Sandor's POV this chapter

_No battle plan survives contact with the enemy._

He should have fucking known better than to think that if he came to fucking Winterfell he was going to be able to stay away from Sansa Stark. For that matter, they all should have known that they wouldn’t be able to trot through the North at a leisurely pace while the White Walkers waited patiently for them to arrive. He’d seen it in the flames at White Harbor--ice spiders and Walkers and a winged shadow looping above the round towers he only vaguely remembered from the Baratheon expedition north so many years ago.

The wolf king had listened to him, listened to what must have sounded like a lunatic’s rantings. He’d give the bastard credit for that. So they were here faster than they’d planned, faster than anyone had thought possible. But still too late. Their horses were half-dead, which put them well ahead of most of the Northern soldiers that Snow had left behind at Winterfell. _They_ were either all dead or past that, blue-eyed slaves of the Great Other.

And Sansa fucking Stark was somehow out there amidst it all, waiting for her chance to die bloody like everyone else in her accursed family.

Yes, if you want to make the gods laugh, tell them your plans.

He’d had a perfectly good plan to hide from her like the coward that he was. He could face the wolf girl--if she wanted anything to do with him--but he’d planned to stay out of Winterfell and turn tail and run in the other direction anytime he so much as heard a murmur that the Lady Stark might be approaching. 

He’d been looking forward to freezing his balls off in some snowbound army tent on the outskirts of Wintertown. It was part of his penance, a kind of “prayer and good works.” But damn all the inscrutable gods, old and new, he’d caught the little bird herself and now she was tucked inside his arm where she bloody well belonged forever.

He was acutely aware of his heart banging through his ribcage and her astonishing burgundy satin hair was right damn there.

His breath was all wrong. How many times could he choke back a heavy sigh before she noticed?

FUCK.

How many years had gone? 

How many days of his life had he spent talking himself out of this feeling? 

Wasted. All of them. He realized now that the sight of her would have done it, but this was even worse--to have her as close as she’d ever been--and he felt as though he were being consumed.

When he looked back on it after the fact, maybe he’d even heard the thwack of the arrow loosed from the bow. Maybe some decades-old reflex alerted him just in time, but stupid fool that he was, aflame with his fear of her, he hadn’t spared a thought for danger coming from within their destination. 

Maybe somewhere along the way he’d absorbed some of her boundless faith in the beneficence of Winterfell itself, and he just hadn’t been expected to get shot at from within Winterfell. 

She made him stupid. Could anything be clearer?

He jerked the reins hard to the right, clutching the little bird close to him, curling them both into the neck of the horse. 

He felt the arrow bite below his left shoulder, below the collarbone, just above the shoulder blade.

She looked up at him, shock and surprise in her eyes. She didn’t know why he and the horse had reacted so suddenly; she wasn’t sure if she should be afraid or not and she was waiting for him to tell her.

“Fucking archers. Don’t worry, bird. Your men are shooting anything that approaches the castle. They’re green and scared, but no harm done,” he said.

She blinked twice, flipped a curtain of hair over one shoulder and pulled herself out of the crook of his arm to brace herself with one hand on the pommel of the horse and one hand on his thigh. Damn. 

Was she trying to climb over him? Stop it, woman. Just be still, for both our sakes.

“OPEN THE GATE,” she hollered up at the men stationed atop the wall. She was using her most commanding voice. 

“Who goes there?” shouted back one of the children charged with defending Winterfell. Hells, was there no one left in all the North worth a damn?

He clamped a hand over her mouth. Save your pretty voice, girl, he thought to himself. She wasn’t having it, brushing his arm away with one hand and smacking him in the belly with the other.

“I have your fucking Stark. Look and see for yourself, and then open...the fucking...gate.” 

When the chain began to roll and the gate finally began to rise, he leapt down from the chestnut--damn, the archers had landed one in the poor horse’s hip. He snapped off the shaft. The arrowhead would have to wait. And then he looked up at her and reached to help her down. 

Yes, there she was. The Princess of the North. His damned princess. She was his doom. She’d only gotten to be more of everything he loved in the years past. More beautiful, more noble, stronger--perhaps slyer somehow. Her hair was in a thick braid, tendrils flying around her face. The eyes...well, fuck me forever. 

His hands were at her waist and her hands were on his shoulders as he pulled her off the horse--that memory of that feeling was going to burn forever. He might as well go to Old Valyria and embrace one of the Stone Men. Death by Sansa Stark was going to hurt; they said greyscale was painless, at least until the very end.

“Thank you...Clegane,” chirped the bird. Stop touching her, idiot.

“Which one of you shot me?”

“Wait, you’re shot?!” 

“Don’t fucking cluck at me like a hen.”

And then from above him, on the battlement walk, a voice: “I’ll say _I_ shot you. And it’s the least that you deserve, you shit. What in all sevens hell are you doing here?”

Ha. Those archers are saved. 

Arya. Arya Stark came down the staircase along the wall, bow in hand, quiver of arrows on her back. Good girl.

“Fuck you, wolf-girl.”

And with that, possibly as punishment for cursing at her little sister, the Lady of Winterfell snapped the shaft of the arrow sticking out of his back and starting fishing around for the point. 

“I said _stop it_.”

Arya smirked at him. Well, if he was being honest, she smiled at him. Glad to see you too, kid. Out of sheer habit, he tried to look annoyed--there was an arrowhead in his back after all--but he had a feeling his face wasn’t cooperating terribly much.

“Lady Stark, can I please go out and play now?” wheedled Arya, hoping to switch their positions now that their dear brother was on the field of battle and the Lady was back in Winterfell where she belonged.

“Not until I get this thing out of him,” says the Lady, pointing toward an inner door. 

He and Arya both glared resentfully and just the same walked toward where she pointed. 

Battle later. That part, and bleeding, was easy enough. The Stark hovering all over him and fussing over some fleabite--that might kill him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter she gets his shirt off. {I got you fam}


	3. Sansa II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shirtless Sandor and internally emo Sansa for you before the Hound and Wolf Girl go back to the war.

“Sit.”

Yes, sit. He was altogether too much when he had the opportunity to loom over her--over almost anyone--and he knew it.

“Stay.”

She felt a twinge of guilt at ordering him to obey like a dog, but only a twinge. Good gods, after all these years, the Hound in Winterfell. Older--longer lines around his eyes. Calmer, somehow--even his scars looked less angry than she remembered.

“Arya, if he moves, stab him or...something.”

“Yes, Lady Stark,” grinned Arya, enjoying this. They’d only talked about him one long night, pouring out all their Hound stories at once and then falling asleep on the same bed like true sisters; they had awoken together the next morning wrung out with grief for their lost...friend? They hadn’t spoken of him since but here he was, and somehow she knew that they were in agreement on this, at least: Sandor Clegane belonged with them. He wasn’t quite a Stark, but he felt more like family than anyone they’d known since they’d left Winterfell. He was here now, and they were going to keep him, no matter how much he barked and snapped.

She fled to Maester Wolkan’s antechamber. He kept boxes of healing unguents and tools, and boiled wine. She took a basketful of tools and tried not to feel like she was stealing. He was no doubt tending to the many wounded that were stacking up outside the gates as she spoke. Dear gods, was there any hope for Winterfell to endure this onslaught of the dead? Could the Targaryen girl’s dragons be enough? Was the dragonglass enough? Could they field men enough to wield what weapons they had?

Never mind that. She’d fix up Sandor Clegane, at least for the time being, and then she’d pray to every god she no longer believed in that he’d survive the battle--and all the wars to come.

She flew back into the Great Hall. Arya was tossing firewood into the fireplace. She had him sitting at the high table, too close to the flames. He was irked, she could tell, but he stayed just the same.

“Don’t worry, we won’t let it hurt you,” taunted Arya.

“Stop it, will you?” she said. Save the gloating for some day when he didn’t just get shot by an arrow while trying to save me. “You--take these off.” 

“No!” 

“Take them off or so help me I’ll--”

“You’ll what?”

Ugh. She hadn’t the slightest idea how she would overpower him or otherwise persuade him to to let her dig out that arrowhead.

“Please? Please let me help you.”

“You’re wasting your time. It’ll work it’s way out soon enough.”

“Let me get it out. Let me clean it. And then you’re free to bleed as much as you like, but I won’t have pieces of you rotting off if I have anything to say about it.”

She heard the grumble in his throat as he unclasped his leather tunic and then pulled the mail and the jersey shirt over his head. 

He was tense as a bow string. Pay attention, girl. 

His back was simply massive. How did he seem three times bigger than any normal man? She wanted to linger on the ropey muscles and the constellation of scars. But he was bleeding, a slow purple seep out from behind the arrow head. She rinsed off a knife with boiled wine and then poured more of the same over the whole works. The vinegary stench knocked her back a bit. He flinched at the wetness. “Hold still,” she said, grabbing ahold of his thick left shoulder to steady him. He dropped his shoulders as though to show her that he trusted her. Could that be so? Never mind.

She took the opportunity to dig in beside the rooted crosshead of the arrow, and pry upward with her knife. It popped out like a cork, spraying a little fountain of blood across his back, and she plunged a folded clean handkerchief into the hole. He grimaced again, glaring back over his shoulder at her. “You’re done. Here take this,” she said as she handed him the thin roll of cloth to wrap around his chest and hand back to her on the other side. She couldn’t confront his face and his body at the same time. Too much.

Was Sandor Clegane really shirtless in the great hall at Winterfell? Is this a dream? No, she felt the warmth of him. The blood was real enough. How unfair that he could bleed and those awful things out there were past pain. Never mind that too. No use crying about any of this.

She tied off the bandage that he handed back her, and stepped away from him. That was enough for now. She needed to get away from the thrumming aliveness of him before the Lady of Winterfell cracked and broke apart and revealed the shivering girl she knew was still deep inside her still. There was something about him that both made her stronger--some sort of pride that made her nip back at him?--and at the same time made her want to collapse completely and throw herself on his mercies, however meager they might be. 

Of course, the Lady of Winterfell was at war and could not afford to collapse into him. Not yet at least.

Not yet? Had she really dared to think that thought? Weren’t those ideas long gone? He was here, though. Here. In Winterfell.

“You two can go have your fun now,” she said, smiling at them both, as if that little girl part of her wasn’t screaming for them to stay and hide with her. They would fight and they would enjoy it, somehow. It was their nature. 

“We’ll see you again soon, bird,” he murmured, not quite smiling as he shrugged back into his mail and his tunic.

Bird.

She knew better than to believe in anything like a promise, but she’d take the plea to the gods--the wish--and hold in in her heart for them both. I’ll see you again soon, my terrible scarred old hound. Soon.


	4. Sandor II: You can do better

_ “Fuck you? Those are your last words? Come on, you can do better...You’re shit at dying, you know that?” --Sandor Clegane,  _ Game of Thrones

The line of men who were determined to have their wounds stitched by her stretched out of the Great Hall. The Lady of Winterfell stood at the head of the line, you see, with a curved needle, boiled wine and her usual warmth. When they reached the head of the line, the soldiers in Jon Snow’s Living Army took great pride in removing their bloody tunics, taking off their mud-encrusted pants and otherwise revealing themselves to Sansa Stark.

While she stitched, they told her ribald jokes and bragged about their prowess in battle, recounting the tale of whatever supposed bravery had earned them the attentions of her needle. She met each one with unflagging generosity and a bright smile. How many hours had she been on her feet already? He could tell she’d stay on them until the line was at an end. He worried about the way she tried to knead her own lower back between each patient. 

She should sit. She probably wouldn’t.

He tried not to hate the men she tended. She sparkled no matter who she was with, but there was a streak of blackness in his heart that resented them just the same. Hadn’t he got the same treatment hours ago? Weren’t they his brothers-in-arms? 

And yet, and yet...

She sparkled for them and they boasted for her and that blackness in his heart was really cowardice. Fear. Fear that one of them would catch her attention for true, and draw her away from him for good. 

As if he had any claim.

As if he and she were anything more than...acquaintances?

As if he had a shot at a highborn beauty like her in this world or the next. He was a scarred, angry beast. She was firelight and candlelight and all that was light, really. Beauty.

The blackness was growing. Cut it out. 

Cut it, you pathetic beast.

He spotted Arya with the plump Tarly from the Night’s Watch. They were cutting off a man’s hand. To be sure, it was hanging on by only a shattered wrist bone and a few tendons.

“Girl, where can I find paper and ink?”

“You can write?”

“I had a maester, same as you,” he said.

“What do you need to write? We’re in the middle of war! Is it time to record your memoirs, ser, and retell your legendary exploits as a great knight of Westeros?”

“Bitch, tell me.”

She glared. Her mouth twitched. She glared and then sighed.

“Hard to come by, truth be told, but look in the solar on the second floor. She has a desk. Don’t break anything, beast. Barring that, find maester Wolkan. Maybe he can give you an endpaper from a shit copy of  _ The Seven-Pointed Star _ .”

“Thank you,” he nodded. She was skeptical of the sincerity in his voice--not his usual tone--and her mouth twitched. Bad habit. She should break that. It was an obvious tell.

The castle was in a roar because of the war, infested with knights in clanking armor and shouting servants and squires and all manner of overexcited miscreants. Asking the right Northern-looking faces, using his best court manners (not a beast, not me), he got directions to the solar. The door was unlocked, but it was blissfully empty, and almost quiet.

The wolf’s lair. They all shared this burrow, he imagined. The basket of yarn and knitting needles would be hers. The assortment of knives and the sharpening block probably weren’t. They had books, more than he’d expect this far north. Her desk was by the window. In summer it would get good light. In a northern winter, it would just be colder there, the glass throwing off a chill.

In winter, she should move it closer to the fire. He had a vision of her shivering, trying to warm her hands by rubbing them together in between writing letters. He was angry with her again. Angry at a ghost that lived only his mind. He was angry that she didn’t have a fluffy mutt who wanted to sit on her feet and keep her toes warm. He was angry that she didn’t have one of her men move that desk closer to the fire. He was angry that she seemed so content up here in the North, serving as her brother’s counselor, serving as his chatelaine, not a proper wife though, some sort of bastard version of that as sister to the bastard king. 

She should be--never mind. He tried to drive the vision from his head and the harder he pushed, the more it circled back around.

He found paper. Iron-gall ink. A quill. His fingers felt clumsy with it. How long since he’d written a damn thing besides his name? Decades?

Back to the racket below stairs. Back to the aftermath of a battle, where the best outcome was that these lads had found their way back with their brothers. He knew well enough there were some forgotten souls out on the plains of the North, dying of wounds or the cold, buried under the bodies of their friends, forgotten. They’d freeze or kick off from their wounds soon enough and then be called by the Great Other, to live on as death itself, in thrall to the end of things, with never a new beginning to come.

Little fat fellow. Arya. “Where did you put the ones that are well and truly fucked?”

The little fat fellow looked at his feet. “Well, there’s no telling what’s going to happen with anyone, really--”

“Bullshit,” he said. “Some are all but dead, and you both know it. Wasting time on them will kill another 10 you could have saved. Where are the ones that are alive now but will be dead soon?”

Fat kid sighed. “They’re in the hall on the way to the kitchens.”

Arya looked up at him suspiciously. “What are you going to do to them?”

* * *

The first one looked like he could take the news with forbearance.

“You’re going to die. Soon. You got anything you want to say to anyone before you go? Woman? Mother?”

The blond man with the close-shorn hair and the goatee had his belly cut open. The guts--intestines and mashed lumps of organ meat--were falling out. His own shit would infest the gash with disease and rot him from the inside soon enough.

“Yes. There’s a girl waiting for me back at Ironoaks. Her name is Indira. She’s...”

“I don’t care if she’s beautiful or not. What’s your name, and what do you want to say to her?”

“I’m Edwin Waynston. Tell her to think of me when she goes sailing on the lake. Tell her I buried the jeweled dagger I used to kill my cousin--it’s under the pine tree in the yard of the sept on the Pebble. She’ll do well selling the gemstones off it. Tell her to get married to some other man, and have his babies, and tell them good lies about me sometimes, when they can’t sleep. Lies about how I was a hero who saved her, that sort of thing.”

“Aye. It won’t all be a lie though. You fought in the War for the Dawn. That’s not nothing, brother.”

“And yet it’s not enough,” said Edwin, straining against the pain, his eyes desperately looking into his future and his past at once.

“No, it’s never enough...She’ll get this,” said Clegane.

“Thank you.”

“Rest now.”

Recalling what to write was easy enough. The words, the spelling, it was all still there. But his fingers felt strange and fat holding the quill, dipping it back in the ink and scratching out the man’s last words. He kept losing a grip on the quill. Out of practice.

Different muscles than swinging a sword, he supposed. 

Next.

Little skinny kid. Just a boy. Wispy goatee trying to be a beard. Wildling maybe. Do ravens go to wildling villages? 

“You’re going to die soon. What’s your name and where are you from, boy?”

“I’m going to die?” Tears welled up in his eyes. Poor child. No one told him and too stunned from the blow to figure it out himself.

“Yes, don’t know why you’re still here with that big a chunk out of the back of your head, but it’ll come on sooner or later. Do you want to say anything to anyone before you go?”

The boy sniffled, doing his level best to be a man about it. Good for him. “Yes. I’m from the Frozen Shore. We live on the Gift now. My mother--”

“What’s your name? What’s hers?”

“I’m Nold. She’s Turneda.”

“Turneda from the Frozen Shore, lives at the Gift. You love her, and take care of the other kids?”

“Yes, that...I wish I could be there in the spring. We have snow dogs and I’m good at spotting the pups worth training. Tell her to name one after me, a good smart one. Might be a lead dog someday, and they’ll say it’s because of me.”

“Nold the snow dog. He’ll be famous.”

“I think so, yes.”

He wrote it all down, before it occurred to him that the mother probably couldn’t read a word of the Common Tongue. He’d have to find her himself. Seven hells. 

Why had he decided to do this in the first place? Probably something to do with Sansa Stark. Things like this were usually her fault.

He wrote down the last words of Northmen, Knights of the Vale, wildlings. He listened to the dying Dothraki. They mostly seemed to be yelling, but he knew they were telling their stories too. He wondered if that’s what he sounded like-- _ angry _ , even at rest. Probably. 

The Unsullied just looked at him. They had a story, but not one they wanted to tell him. Fair enough. 

The last man in the hall was dying from a longsword through the chest. The longsword had been a wight’s blade, carried for many years through the snow and ice; it was rusted to hell, pieces falling off. Someone had snapped off the bit that protruded through the man’s back, so he could rest on a pallet in the hall. Every time he moved, a bubble of blood erupted from the entry wound. Couldn’t pull out the sword or the whole works would pour out.

The dying man had been watching him. 

“Name’s Rolla. From the Salt Shore, but haven’t been there since I was two-and-ten. Sellsword most of my days. Came up here looking to get hired by that dragon woman. Not going to get paid, it seems,” said the man.

“No, not this time. Who do I write to?”

“Oh, there’s no one. Mother’s long dead from pox. Never knew my father. He was a sailor. Probably never even knew I existed.”

“What about a woman?” rasped Clegane.

“No.”

“A man then? Some nance who saw you across a tavern and knew you for what you are?”

“No, not a man either. Plenty of whores in my time--girl whores, thank you. A serving wench when I could get one. There was a widow one time, took me in for a night when we were passing through her town. Can’t remember her name but she was a decent fuck. Five times that night. She cried when I left in the morning, but I don’t think it was really me she was crying for.”

“Any of those whores have names? Maybe one remembers you.” 

“No.”

“A friend then? Someone you served with?”

“I’ve had friends, I think,” said Rolla, “but that’s only for the time you was working together. Siege the castle. Kill the raiders. Defend the maiden’s virtue. Job’s done, friend’s done. No one I ever wanted to see again after I got my gold.”

“So no message from you then,” said Clegane.

“No message from me. Thanks just the same, friend” said Rolla.

And with a nod, Clegane pulled the rusty blade out of the man’s chest. The first blood was heavy and clotted where it had settled around the wound, but then, as the man’s heart pumped its last, a red flood began, until it seemed that all the man’s blood was out of his body and on the floor of the hallway at Winterfell. Rolla turned pale--no blood, no color--and grew still. 

Clegane closed his eyes. 

That’s that, except for the extra mess for some scullion to suffer with her mop.

Clegane bundled up his letters. He’d keep them safe in his saddlebags until there was time for ravens. Dark wings, dark words, to be sure.

He knocked the leftover ink off the quill back into the pot. He should return this from whence it came.

He passed the Great Hall as he made his way. Easy to spot the flame of her hair amongst the crowd. He saw her roll her neck and shrug her shoulders. She wasn’t used to standing this long.

She should sit. 

Someone should make her sit.

Someone should put her to bed. 

Those bastards would survive just fine without her. But she wanted to celebrate their heroics and make herself feel useful. Fine. Suffer.

The solar was even colder now. Maybe darker? He let his eyes adjust to the darkness before he replaced the inkpot and the sheets he hadn’t used. Done.

Would it be terrible to sit in that chair by her knitting basket? Fuck it. He was tired too, if he acknowledged the truth of it. 

Where the fuck was he supposed to sleep tonight? Maybe he’d find a kennel, or a stable.

And what would his damn last words would be? 

What the hell message would _he_ give? 

He was more like Rolla than he cared to admit. Family dead. No friends that mattered for very long. When his time came, there would be no one weeping at the news. No one to send the news to, really. The world would shrug and move on. 

Would the little wolf give a damn? Maybe.

No tears, to be sure, not from the likes of her. But maybe when she told her own war stories in some hall somewhere, she’d remember who taught her how to kill. 

Maybe.

The other one...a woman now--she...she wouldn’t keep him as ghost, would she? No. He’d fade away with all her other bad memories from King’s Landing and the Great War. 

Hell, she’d probably be dead with all the rest of the North if they couldn’t find a way to defeat the Walkers. They’d beat them back today, but it was as if a storm had swept them away, more than that any strategy or weapon or army had done it. 

He wished, though. 

Seven hells, he’d always wished. 

He wished that this fire was lit and he was sitting in her chair to annoy her when he had a perfectly good chair over there, and she was fussing at her desk on the cold side of the room with the shaggy mongrel sitting on her toes. He wished that he was ending his day not alone in a cold empty cell, but with a mug of something warm that would make him sleepy, and a bird chirping over his shoulder about the receipts from the smallholdings and the goat-fence problem and not being ready for some very important, totally insignificant feast. He wished that she’d finally realize her hands were so cold she couldn’t write properly and she’d come sit on his lap and he’d rub her back and she’d nuzzle his neck on the side of his face that was closest to the fire, and she’d tease that she was protecting him.

He’d see if she’d let him put his hand up her skirt. How far could he get before she smacked him or took him to bed or both?

He wished she liked him in her bed and wept for it one day when he wasn't there anymore.

He wished she looked for him when he was gone, maybe out the window next to that desk.

He wished.

But wishes aren’t wives. And women like Sansa Stark don’t become wives to men like him. 

He’d fight for her though. She wouldn’t ever know he was out there for her and her bitch sister, but he supposed he was. Even if no one ever knew or remembered that he lived or died or why, at least he’d go to his end knowing that he’d given everything he had, all of it, for them. 

Destroying his body to keep their bodies intact and breathing was a good way to go.


	5. Sansa III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I've let this languish in favor of "Nine Gifts from the Old Gods," but I didn't want to end for good on Sad!Sandor so I found one last bit of Sansa's point of view about the return of Sandor Clegane. Enjoy.

Ow.

Ow.

Ow.

Sansa’s feet hurt. Her back hurt. Every muscle from her neck to her ankles seemed to hurt. Her back was so tight she thought maybe she wouldn’t able to stand straight again, and she would look like a wizened, humped crone before her time.

_Oh gods, stop whining, Sansa. All those men were--are--in a great deal more pain than you, and they took their stitches bravely. You can suffer an ache here and there._

Still, sleep would feel so good right now. She determined to put away the strong black thread she’d used for the stitches in her sewing box and then try to sneak in an hour or two of sleep before the people, nay the castle itself, demanded her attentions once again.

Up the stairs, down the hall, around the corner. A brief stop in her solar, and then bed.

She pushed open the door, and there, illuminated in only the faintest orange glow of a nearly dead fire, was _Sandor Clegane_. If she wasn’t sure it was him she would have been frightened, but no other man in Winterfell had his sheer breadth of shoulder. It could be none other.

_What is he doing here? Maybe no one showed him to the Guards Hall and he just took his chances here?_

Sansa was frozen at the door, feeling like she’d interrupted something, even though it was _her_ solar. Seeing him there, in her home place, still shocked her and made her heart clench inside her chest, half in fear in and half in hope.

Finally, she made a decision. She entered, barred the door behind her and knelt down. On her knees, still aching all over from stiffness, she knelt in front of Sandor Clegane.

She took in the whole great mass of him, from his boots up his legs to his strong thighs, over his vast chest and up to his half-scarred face. She noted, and not for the first time, that he looked transformed since she had seen him last. Whatever magic had kept him alive after Lady Brienne had killed him had also infused him with a new vigor. He no longer reeked of wine and pain so strongly that it knocked her back when she stood close. Now, kneeling just beyond his strong thighs, she thought he smiled like soil after a rain, and leather, and woodsmoke, and a kind of vinegar tang of sweat and exhaustion.

It was foolish, so foolish, that she had missed him so much. But she’d thought of Sandor Clegane as often as she’d thought of anyone that she’d lost. She kept him in her catalogue of the dead. He was in there with everyone who left Winterfell to travel south to King’s Landing and didn’t come back. He’d been a retainer of the Lannisters for most of his life, and yet somehow she felt that he belonged in the North, with her.

He must be so uncomfortable sleeping in a chair, but he looked almost...sweet. His chin was resting on his chest, his arms crossed loosely--for warmth no doubt--and his unimaginably long strong legs were stretched out before him. _Would that I could put him to bed_ , she thought.

Suddenly she realized that what she wanted, more than anything else, was to tell him the truth.

Her breath caught in her throat. She knew better. She’d learned from Littlefinger that withholding your motives gives you great power over others. And yet she despised the late Lord Baelish and had cultivated a kind of worship for the strange, angry, ugly man before her, because he was brutally honest and did not mince words or mangle the truth for his own purposes.

She was afraid to wake him, afraid that he would be embarrassed at being caught in her solar, afraid that he would be angry at her, afraid that she would make a fool of herself.

Sansa touched his thigh, right above his knee. Too intimate. And yet what needed to be done. She rose up onto her knees and stroked upward--not too far--and said, “Clegane. Sandor Clegane, wake up. It’s morning.”

He didn’t startle--she thought for sure he’d jump out of his skin--just looked at her face like she was...impossible? And then he looked down at her hand, and then back at her face, and then around the room to figure out where he was.

He started to push himself forward, and she panicked a little.

“Please! Please, wait. Please,” she said. _Grovelling already? What a fool you are, Sansa Stark._

He leaned back and waited, his eyes squinting at her and eyebrows furrowed in concern.

She exhaled out of her nose. She wasn’t sure where to start. And she suddenly realized she was freezing.

“Please just wait here for--” she said, gesturing with her hand that he ought to stay put. She leapt up and moving to the hearth and fed tinder to the nearly dead fire and blew on it a little. Ah, fire again. Warmth, if not heat.

She had to add a couple of logs to the fire, or they’d both catch their deaths, right here in the castle.

Her face must be a mirror of his. Concerned. She said back down in front of him, and then back up on her heels, and put her hand back on his thigh where it had been. He hadn’t moved a muscle while she moved away and came back.

She sighed, deeply, and forged ahead. _Oh, his dear face._

_Sandor Clegane is here._

“I wanted to say how glad I am that you are here. Welcome to Winterfell...I...the truth is that I’ve wanted to see you again for--I think I woke up the morning after Stannis tried to take King’s Landing and regretted that I didn’t go with you, and I think I’ve regretted it more or less every day since. Not...not because I missed my chance to be free, although I did, but because I couldn’t see you again. I’ve wanted to talk to you so many times since that night and I never could. You went to battle and you tried to save me even if you couldn’t single-handedly save the whole city, and then you were gone. I was a fool--”

He exhaled then, and she saw he was angry. Was he angry that she _was_ a fool or angry because he disagreed with her self-assessment?

“Please wait until I’m done,” she begged. “If I don’t get this out now, I might never be brave enough to say it. I’ve missed you, is the truth. You were my only friend in King’s Landing, and I never had another friend--a true friend who didn’t want something from me or need some part of my claim, but someone who just liked me--from then maybe until Brienne saved me. I’ve missed you, even though I never really knew you--how could I? There’s a part in the vows that Brienne swore to us--because she promised our mother--it says that ‘I will shield your back and keep your counsel.’ I always think of that line and even as I am so grateful to Brienne, when I think that and when I think of how I do need counsel, so much, there’s a little voice in my heart that whispers, ‘I wish the Hound were here. I wish I could talk to Sandor Clegane.’ You must think me the most ridiculous girl. But I...above all, I’ve wanted to thank you for all that you did for me. Please know how grateful I am. And how happy I am to see you again.”

And then she was done. She was amazed at how much she’d had to say, and she felt like she might cry and she snatched her hand away from his thigh and put it in her lap and closed her eyes, ashamed.

Silence. She felt the tears gathering behind her closed eyelids. She wasn’t sure if he would mock her, or be angry with her, or just leave. She’d be most grateful if he would just leave and close the door behind him and perhaps they would never speak of any of this again. Never speak at all really. That would be best.

He cleared his throat. Her eyes flew open. He looked overwhelmed and his eyes were wet.

What is happening?

He sniffed and looked away and then leaned toward her and pushed her hair out of her face. _What is he doing?_ And then he clutched her to him. Oh, he was so warm and so strong. She didn’t understand why he was holding her, but she thought his touch might be the best physical sensation she’d had in years.

He pushed her back then, and she rocked back onto her heels, and looked up into his eyes. She put one hand on each thigh and petted him then. This was impossibly intimate and yet it was all she could think to do. She wanted to coax some speech out him. She wanted him to know that he was safe with her, always.

“Sansa,” he began. He sounded like he was choking. "A lot of men died here yesterday. I wasn’t one of them but I might be tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that. If I go, it won’t be too long before I am forgotten completely, as if I never existed at all. I wouldn’t mind that so much if I hadn’t met you and your sister. You’re the first people I’ve known my whole life that I want to mean something to. I can’t explain it, but I want to do right by you, Stark. You and the other one. I haven’t got any standing to be _anything_ to you, but I realized yesterday that--that I don’t give a fuck. Maybe I can get away with something because there’s a war on. Maybe I can’t. But, damn me, I feel I ought to try.”

_Yes. Oh god. Yes._

Sansa blinked, quite a few times. She thought again, _tell him the truth_.

“Yes, please try. You’ll think less of me after I say this, but...I would be ever so pleased if you were to take some liberties. You’re right, we’re at war. We’ve got to act fast. Maybe cut a few corners. There’s no time for anything else.”

“Some...liberties?” he said, with a raised eyebrow and an improbably bemused smile.

“Liberties,” she nodded, feeling insecure and confident all at once.

He swallowed, worrying. His gray eyes looked her up and down, and then to the fire and then to the window. She thought maybe he was planning an escape. She felt for him. He was struggling with the same questions as her: what’s the right thing to do? Not just right for me, but right for you, and for us, and for the world. What is my duty? Am I free to decide this? Are you?  

“Very well, Lady Stark,” said Sandor Clegane, and then he reached down to hold her head in his vast hands and trace her cheekbones with his thumbs and she saw that when she was kneeling she wasn’t yet as tall as he was sitting. She tipped her head back a bit to look into his eyes and appreciate, not for the first time since he’d returned, his great brown beard. She felt a warmth growing between her legs and all he’d done was touch her face.

 _Is this really happening now? After all these years?_ _With the bloody Hound, Sandor Clegane?_

She thought maybe she should be the one to kiss him, but it wasn’t to be. He kissed her, softly at first, so softly. It could have been a peck. It could have been brotherly or fatherly or some sweet childhood suitor, but it wasn’t, it was her Hound, and he was letting her decide if this was really what she wanted. It very much was.

She ran her fingers through his vast beard and up through his hair and over his scars, to pull her closer to him. Her lips fell open. She realized she’d never done this before: opened herself up to a man. Every kiss she’d ever suffered from Lord Baelish had been a similar approach, but she only ever wanted to clamp her mouth shut and shove him away. With Sandor Clegane, now, here, she wanted to open her mouth and her arms and her legs and her heart to him, all at once.

He matched her openness, and dragged his lips over hers, pulling on her lower lip a little and she felt a sharp stab of pleasure jolt between her legs. She inhaled, felt his tongue plunge inside her mouth, and _oh yes_. Had that moan come from her? It must have. He grabbed her then, lifting her under her arms and up off the floor and into his lap. Improper! She was perched in his thigh now, and his hand was running up her side, to her neck, into her hair. Their tongues danced and plunged, their mouths open and searching, their lips pulling and pursing. Yes, yes.

She squirmed closer to him, and kept her arms around his neck, hanging on to him for dear life. _I’ve needed this for so long_ , she thought.

He pulled back then, and they both caught their breath, and she gazed into his beautiful stormy gray eyes and willed him to see how she felt about him, how much she wanted this.

“Liberties?” he asked again.

“Yes,” she whispered, nodding her agreement.

And at her nod, he rucked up her skirt past her knees, and ran one hand--his big hand--up her outer thigh almost to her hip. “I fell asleep last night imagining doing this,” he whispered into her mouth.

She hummed her pleasure and her anticipation and wiggled in his lap, wanton.

He chuckled, deep in his throat. “This is an extraordinary way to start a day, little bird, but you haven’t ended your day yet, have you?”

“Who cares?” she muttered, leaning in to kiss him again. “I won’t break, Sandor Clegane.”

He kissed her back, gently again, just a press of his lips. “The other thing I wanted to do last night was put you to bed.” She giggled. “Not like that, girl.”

She tried not to pout, and then he pulled her skirts down and nudged her off his lap on her feet. He stood up, and suddenly she was looking at his shoulder. She wondered if her face reflected the misery she suffered at that moment.

“Lady Sansa of House Stark,” he began.

“Who?” she asked, a little angry.

“Little bird, I’m a greedy fucker, but I’m not stupid. I won’t push my luck while you’re dead on your feet--”

She moved to protest but he put his thumb over her lips and it felt so lovely she stayed quiet, just to enjoy the sensation.

“Go to bed, woman. I’m not going anywhere. If you sleep off the madness and regret everything, we'll forget this ever happened. But if you still want...this, when you’re back in your right mind, I could be persuaded to kiss you again.”

She wanted to stamp her feet. She wanted to shove him. She wanted to yell at him. She realized that none of that would do much to convince that she was not a child and did not need to be sent to bed.

She wanted to cry.

He looked down at her, hope and fear mixing in his face and reflecting every single thing _she_ felt about _him_ , and so she reached up to pet his bearded cheek, and she thought he leaned into her touch for just a moment.

Then he turned away and pulled up the bar on the inside of the door, opened it, passed over the threshold and closed the door again behind him. He left her standing alone in her solar with the feel of his kisses still on her lips.

He’d said “I could be persuaded to kiss you again.” She smiled softly then. She’d persuade him to do more than that.

Her Hound had returned. They’d found each other again, after all this time. Imagine. She felt as though her heart was beating through her chest, and her cheeks were warm. Her soul was warm again, in from the cold after years of loneliness and terror, wandering in strange lands.

He was in Winterfell, and he’d said “I’m not going anywhere.”

No, he couldn’t possibly go anywhere else, because this was _their_ home, whether he knew it yet or not.


End file.
